According to PANews, there has been a recent surge in interest around TON and Telegram, with many speculating that TON could be the next SOL or ETH. However, Blockworks Research suggests that TON may struggle to meet these high expectations.
Telegram, despite its global influence and impressive daily active user (DAU) count, may not be able to drive as much traffic to TON as expected. By DAU standards, Telegram is one of the most used applications worldwide. With a user base of 900 million, it ranks 8th among global applications. However, the user stickiness of Telegram, as measured by DAU, may be overestimated. Despite a high monthly active user (MAU) count, the DAU is relatively low, with the DAU/MAU ratio only at 15%. In comparison, Facebook's ratio is 69%, Wechat's is around 67%, Instagram's is 60%, TikTok's (only counting the US market) is 49%, and Twitter's is 45%. This suggests that Telegram's market penetration is lower than expected, and its profitable user base is smaller than market expectations.
The TON ecosystem team will face challenges due to a lack of Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) compatibility and limited use of FunC, the native programming language of the blockchain. The TON Virtual Machine (TVM) is not compatible with the EVM due to TON's completely different architecture. As a result, the TON ecosystem does not support development in Ethereum's Solidity programming language. According to a 2023 developer survey, Rust is the most admired language, with over 80% of developers hoping to use it again next year. 46.4% of developers hope to use Solidity. However, the three programming languages available on TON - Fift, FunC, and Tact - are not well-known or admired, with FunC being the most used.
A significant part of the narrative growth of TON is that Telegram will become the next WeChat. However, WeChat is blocked outside the Chinese market. In contrast, today's app market is dominated by wealthy tech giants with strong network effects, and Telegram's largest market is in the scattered markets of the Asia-Pacific region (excluding China and Eastern Europe), adding a layer of complexity for startups using Telegram for distribution.
Despite these realities, TON still has enormous growth potential, but new investors have almost no safety margin. Among all public chains, TON's FDV is 8.6 times its network's annualized DEX transaction volume, ranking first and at the highest level. In addition, the FDV is 927 times its network's annualized fees, ranking among the top in all public chains.